SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 9 December 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Compton, D G
(1930-2023) UK author, born of parents who were both in the theatre; he increasingly lived in the USA after 1981. As Guy Compton, he published some unremarkable detective novels, beginning with Too Many Murderers (1962), and as by Frances Lynch produced some nonfantastic Gothics throughout his career; but soon turned to sf with tales almost always set in the Near Future, and anatomizing moral dilemmas within that arena: the future is very clearly ...
Pygaster, Cal I
(? - ) US author of an sf Sex tale, Zero Gravity Swap (1970), which is set in space. The presumed pseudonym appears to be derived from "callipygean", i.e. having attractively shaped buttocks. [JC/DRL]
Westworld [tv]
US tv series (2016-2022). Bad Robot/Jerry Weintraub Productions/Kilter Films. Created, part directed and part written by showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, "with" Michael Crichton. Other Season One directors include Jonny Campbell, Richard J Lewis, Michelle MacLaren, Neil Marshall, Vincenzo Natali, Frederick E O Toye, Stephen Williams. Credit sequence directed by Patrick Clair. Other Season One writers include Ed Brubaker, Dan Dietz, Halley ...
Passing Show, The
UK weekly paper of humour and short fiction which had two distinct incarnations, both published by Odhams Press, London. The first series ran for 918 issues from 20 March 1915 to 19 March 1932. This was a small tabloid-size magazine, initially with wartime paper restrictions, that gradually grew in size to become a standard tabloid from January 1924. The emphasis was on cartoons and brief humorous stories, but it occasionally ran to longer items and is probably best remembered, in this ...
Unferth, Deb Olin
(1968- ) US author initially noted for her short stories, most of which have been assembled as Minor Robberies (coll 2007) and Wait Till You See Me Dance (coll 2017), many of them surreally apophthegmatic. She is of sf interest for Barn 8 (2020), a narrative which edges by steps into the very Near Future as Climate Change hits and an animal-liberation freeing of ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...